On New Year’s Eve 2019, a drive-by shooting took place in the popular Johannesburg suburb of Melville. Two people were killed and six injured in this shocking and as-yet-unsolved case. Almost unheard-of in this crime-ridden city, the drive-by horrified local communities, provoking surging anxiety in everyone from middle class home- and business owners to student renters and informal workers. To unravel the “true crime” beneath the sensational headlines, Nicky Falkof speaks with Antonette Gouws, who was present at the drive-by, as well as local “character,” Danny Nunes, and filmmaker and academic, Dylan Vally. As we’ll hear in this episode, these unsolved murders expose the convenient fictions of Melville’s multilateral security infrastructure. Local sleuthing about the drive-by also unveils long-held beliefs about race, corruption, violence, insecurity and belonging in this complicated city. 

Useful Links 

Sophiatown Arts Akademy: https://www.instagram.com/sophiatownartsakademy/

Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa: https://www.seri-sa.org/

Sticky Situations: https://stickysituations.org/

Dlala Nje: https://www.dlalanje.org/about

website : https://materialcrimes.com/

Further Reading

Zimitri Erasmus. Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2017). 

Nicky Falkof and Cobus van Staden (eds). Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global South City (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2020). 

Martin J. Murray. City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg (Durham: Duke UP, 2011). 

Tanya Zack and Mark Lewis, Wake Up, This is Joburg! (Durham: Duke UP, 2023). 

Bio 

Nicky Falkof is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Wits University in Johannesburg. She is the author of The End of Whiteness: Satanism and Family Murder In Late Apartheid South Africa (2017) and Worrier State: Risk, Anxiety and Moral Panic in South Africa (2022), and co-editor of Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global South City (2020) and Intimacy & Injury: In the Wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa (2022). 

Voiceovers: Nkululeko Sibiya